#3685. Eating Healthy

Health, level: all
Posted Mon Feb 27 13:14:23 PST 2006 by Noel Nimmons (noelnimmons@hotmail.com).
Vista View Middle School, Huntington Beach, Orange
Materials Required: Food Pyramid, Food log
Activity Time: 2 days
Concepts Taught: Food Pyramid, eating healthy

Noel Nimmons
Health Strand

Lesson: Food Guide Pyramid

Grade: 6

California Standard for Health:

Standard 1:The student understands and demonstrates ways in which his or her health and well-being can be enhanced and maintained.
Explore the wide variety of healthful food choices available in all cultures.
Set personal goals for developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

California Language Arts Standards:

Writing 1.0 Students write and speak with command of standard English conventions appropriate to this grade level. (i.e. sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization)

Learning Objective:
1. Students will learn how the new Food Guide Pyramid is set up.
2. Students will compare the food they eat to what is on the Food Guide Pyramid and see how closely they are following the guidelines.
3. Students will make a personal plan for improvement utilizing the Food Guide Pyramid.

Materials Needed:
(1)Poster of the Food Guide Pyramid
Food Guide Record (1 for each student)
Piece of Paper (for Journal writing)

Activity:
1. Ask students to record what they eat for entire day on the worksheet titled "Food Record".
2. Go over the Food Guide Pyramid with the students and see how many servings of each category there are.
3. Have the students take out the worksheet titled "Building My Pyramid". Students will fill in the number of servings they had in one day (ex. "I had ____ servings.") for each category on the Food Guide Pyramid. Then they will write the number of servings they still need.
4. Ask students to share with a neighbor their results.
5. On a separate sheet of paper ask students to write a plan for how they can improve the food they eat in order to eat the right amount of servings on the Food Guide Pyramid. Make sure they answer the following questions: Were you close to the number of servings on the Food Guide Pyramid?, What could you substitute out of your food record that would help you reach the number of suggested servings on the Food Guide Pyramid?, and Will it be easy or difficult to make these changes.
6. Students will share responses with the class.
7. Students will share foods that would be healthy choices to eat.

Checking for Understanding/Assessment:
The teacher will assess the students by looking at their original Food Record and comparing it the answers they put on the "Building My pyramid". Students need to answer the questions honestly.

Integrated Subjects:
Health and Language Arts